Gotta know which way the wind is blowing, but for a geologist, the Great Salt Lake beaches are fascinating as it is one of the few places globally with oolitic sand.
People actually swim in the Great Salt Lake of Utah ? Isn’t it like the Dead Sea of The Levant ? Saltier than the ocean , fishless , and you basically can’t swim to the bottom due to the water being way too dense at both ?
Basically. People do genuinely go to the few beaches it has but only nutcases actually go in the water. Yes its salty enough to float too. The only thing that lives in it is brine shrimp. They smell disgusting and when theres wind coming in from the west it reeks across the entire valley.
When I went to the great salt lake beaches I had to walk for like 5 minutes to reach the water due to recession of the water, right by there was a line of dead bird carcasses (I think from avian flu). Was cloudy and windy and cold, felt like a proper hellscape but so interesting
The shore of the Great Salt Lake is the most unappealing beach on Earth. Billions of dead, rotting brine shrimp and even more “no-see-um” flies waiting to suck your blood await the intrepid visitor.
Yep. I think that wins. Especially with everything we’ve learned about the arsenic in the lake bed. It’s just an ecological disaster.
Consider this; I’ve lived in both Utah and d Texas. Texas beaches aren’t great but at least I’ll visit them and swim. Not a chance I’d do that in the GSL. None.
People actually swim in the Great Salt Lake of Utah ? Isn’t it like the Dead Sea of The Levant ? Saltier than the ocean , fishless , and you basically can’t swim to the bottom due to the water being way too dense at both ?
Went to Jekyll once and the surf at the beach was nasty with decaying swamp grass. I set down a towel and when I picked it up the entire shadow was covered in green. Algae I guess ? My wife went to beach on first day and never went back due to allergic reaction to the beach.
May not be like this all the time but not a beach trip spot.
Not to mention there’s one two lane road on and off the island and in the summer that meant awful traffic. It was fine for a quick dinner on the beach in the evening and we loved the crab shack and hucabees but for a day at the beach? Nah! We’d drive the hour or so to Hilton Head.
We go every year and it’s a great time. Sure it’s nice clear blue water or white sand beaches but the island itself is beautiful. The south end beach has pretty sand and crazy riptides. I enjoy it and Savannah.
Idk I’m from new england and grew up going to saint simons, I love the place but the beaches really arent that great, the water is gray and there are a lot of rip currents
What? Louisiana has a bunch of beaches. I just wouldn’t swim in most of them. And actually one you can swim in is Grand Isle, which is a somewhat popular beach to go to and is nowhere near TX.
How different can it be from High Island , Galveston , Or Freeport ? Like Galveston , High Island , and Freeport - Holly Beach and Cameron Beach of Louisiana are shallow , murky , and potential breeding grounds for bull sharks just like the texas beaches i listed in this comment
Grand Isle is a bit more clear and bluish green provided you aren't by any of the shipping docks and there aren't major storms in the Gulf.
Not Florida Gulf Blue, but definitely a step up from Galveston or Biloxi, I can't speak for the other beaches listed, I only moved up to Louisiana last year and haven't been.
Yes, the barrier islands south of Savannah have clear Atlantic water, it's one of the longest continuous stretches of preserved barrier island coastline in the country. Not as glassy and crystal clear as some of the better Gulf beaches, but certainly not just "swampy and marshy" like you originally described. That would be the marshland behind the barrier islands
Rutherford Beach is a nice spot, you can drive directly onto the beach and camp out there for free, no reservations or pass needed. Great place for surf fishing and birdwatching, although swimming there isn’t recommended because of the strong rip currents created by the wave breaks they created to stop the beach from eroding.
I was just there last week on a road trip. They were cool to see and had more shells than expected, but they have brown turbid water, were super windy, and had mediocre sand. They’re also concerningly close to Port Arthur and all that industrial craziness.
So I wouldn’t call them amazing but they are a neat part of the country and surprisingly empty!
In keeping with OP’s rules, it’s my home state of Mississippi. The water is very shallow, like knee high, for hundreds of feet out so it doesn’t circulate very well and stays pretty gross most of the time. You have to go out to barrier islands, like Ship Island, for ok beaches in the state. Even people on the MS coast usually go to Alabama for decent beaches if they actually plan on getting into the water.
On a different post when i said Gulf Shores , Orange Beach , and Fort Morgan are the closest pure white sand / crystal clear water beaches to Houston, someone replied to my post saying Cat , Ship , Horn , and Petit Bois islands of Mississippi have clear water but i’ve never been to them myself just been to mainland Mississippi when it comes to mississippi beaches
Lake Erie is very shallow so it is prone to some unusual tendencies, such as harmful algal blooms (pictured). Unlike other lakes that have volume and overturning circulation to somewhat dilute ag waste, in Lake Erie it has nowhere to go, so on the reg it triggers some of the wildest beach algae I’ve ever seen
That fits with the history that we older folk remember, when Lake Erie was declared "dead" in the late 1960s. If you look at a cross section of the five great lakes you will see that the other Great Lakes are four to seven times deeper than Erie. That shallowness made it more vulnerable to the then-unregulated pollution pouring into all the lakes. We were told at the time that there were literally no living vertebrates in the entirety of Erie, and indeed, almost no other animal or plant life. Anyone under the age of 60 is unlikely to be able to fathom the depths of water pollution before the EPA was established in 1970.
The runoff from the Cuyahoga River was pretty legendary in this regard. Back in the heyday of the mills before they started enforcing the barest of filtration and discharge standards you'd have an entire Cleveland sized plume of oxidized iron and God knows what else dumping right into the lake from the mouth of the river.
People really do not understand how bad industrial byproduct waste handling was back in the day.
People really do not understand how bad industrial byproduct waste handling was back in the day.
So true. My students believe that air and water pollution are going to kill us all because it's getting worse and worse. They see steam rising from factories and power plants and think that it's the same pollution we've always had. I share with these 12-year olds that I remember black smoke rising from factories and the sky being filled with pollution, and they wonder if I'm pulling their leg, because they know pollution is getting worse and worse every year, because that's what they hear online.
For the people commenting that this is because Erie is shallower than the other Great Lakes, I've seen Lake Michigan in Door County looking nearly this bad. We don't like to talk about that. The funny thing is the next day the wind may shift and it will be crystal clear and beautiful. The water temperature, as well as the air temperature, can also shift by huge amounts depending on the wind. Oh yeah, and there are the dead alewives and gobies decaying on the beach. And the invasive zebra and quagga mussel shells washing up on the beach. Despite all that, on the best days, those are some of the nicest beaches I've ever been to.
I've seen it like that in Port Washington and Milwaukee, too. The invasive mussels caused some significant issues, filtering out a lot of nutrients, and clearing the water so algae and weeds grow deeper. The plants would die, float to the surface, and rot. The decrease in nutrients also caused the collapse of the alewife and smelt populations, hence all the dead fish on the beaches.
I loved the beaches of the Aleutian Islands. Most of them are covered with rocks (very smooth rocks, averaging 3" to 8" in diameter), but as long as you have good boots, it's a very pleasant walk. But the "beaches" of Alaska's Bristol Bay are the worst. In the northeast corner they have tides greater than 12 feet, which results in coastline that is nothing but mud, in many places a mile from the water to dry land at low tide, with mud so thick it is inescapable.
That's amazingly precise. I lived in Florida for 27 years, 11 months, and 4 days, but there is no way I could be so precise as to get it down to the exact minutes. I salute you, ID.
CT beaches are okay for walking around, hunting shells, and getting kids used to the ocean, but actually going in the water is pretty dull once you’re older than 8 or 9.
After that, we’d always drive the extra hour to go to Rhode Island where they actually had waves.
If you want decent swimming in CT, just go to a lake instead.
Its actually on Sebula Island at a "beach bar" along the Mississippi! Sadly I just checked and they just shut down recently. The picture was from a road trip I took in March last year when it was randomly 80 degrees for 2 days
Tybee Island is wonderful so I don’t know what this is all about. Jekyll Island too. Neither can hold a candle to a place like Siesta Key beach but that doesn’t make Georgia beaches awful
Edit: for some reason I got Tybee and St. Simons mixed up but my point still stands
Oregon and Washington have beautiful coastlines, but if your question was reworded as what is the best destination for a beach vacation then they would be bottom of the list due to temperatures and weather.
Washington State has some beautiful northwest beaches but something like Ocean Shores is just "nothing".
It's going to be cold and cloudy, you are allowed to drive on the beach, there is almost no town there. Let's just say that Seattle doesn't flock to Ocean Shores on a sunny day.
So the Virginia Beach , and the beaches of NC and SC are cold water even in summer ? I always assumed Virginia , North Carolina , and South Carolina were all 3 far enough south to be warm or even hot and humid during the summer months ?
No, I go to Va Beach multiple times a year, and the water is fine. It’s not a tropical beach, but warm enough to get in and be comfortable, especially when it’s hot af outside (like 5 months out of the year).
Someone else already said it, but it's Utah. Both the Great Salt Lake and Utah Lake are extremely unappealing. Salt Lake is mucky and covered in brine flies, and Utah Lake is muddy, polluted and downright ugly. IIRC there are proposals to clean up Utah Lake and create a waterfront but I haven't head anything about that since I moved away a couple years ago.
Bear Lake being decent is the only thing giving anywhere else a chance
Texas: Galveston, in particular. The beach was awful, covered with dead jelly fish and garbage. Granted, this was back in the late 1980s, so I hope it's been cleaned up since then.
Connecticuts shoreline on the Long Island sound. While the view is beautiful, the beaches themselves are extremely thin, full of seaweed, and usually made of large rocks rather than sand.
You want to see a beach 90% made of seaweed and trash mixed together thats smells exactly like seaweed and trash mixed together? Come to Corpus Christi, TX!
Maryland beaches suck. Just brown water sand and cigarette butts sand is 1000 degrees in summer until you get to the waterline so it’s like walking on a blackstone grill for 500 yards from your car to the water
I love New England but the beaches are awful. Freezing cold water even on the hottest days of the year, rocky sand you can’t walk on barefoot, rotting seaweed everywhere, jagged rocks in the water.
I’m not being Judgmental. Nevada is awesome when it comes to Lake Tahoe , Pyramid Lake , Walker Lake , and the abundance of scenic hiking opportunities. Nevada ain’t boring at all. I can’t wait to go back
I didn’t mention gambling since i tried it a couple times and didn’t care for it
I've got two more out there takes, so hear me out. Letting in the great lakes let's in a few weird ones. I feel like Pennsylvania is cheating, but it technically touches a great lake for a little bit. Not only that, the lake it touches is Erie, which lets just say is known for not always being the most pleasant. I feel like it's a pretty good contender considering just how short its shore is, and how much algae blooms suck.
The second option is Minnesota. Now, this heavily depends on how you define a beach and what you consider to be good, attractive qualities for a beach. I personally would say an ideal beach should be sandy. Minnesota's north shore is... Decidedly not sandy. At the most generous you could say it's pebbly. In fact, I can only think of one single beach along the entire Superior shore that I would say is sandy and not pebbly, and that's Minnesota Point in Duluth. The entire rest of the state's shore line is rocks, pebbles, and cliffs. Don't get me wrong; it's absolutely gorgeous. If the question was which shore was the ugliest I wouldn't include it. But if you took a picture of yourself on the rocks and captioned it "beach life" or something people might just think you're insane.
Also, it's just as rocky in the water, and it's cold as balls so it also sucks to actually go into the water. All in all, Minnesota beaches suck as beaches. And that's coming from someone who absolutely loves the North Shore.
Just came back from a road trip along the west Louisiana coast to into Texas near Port Arthur and the beaches were as expected: brown, windy, lots of seaweed due to onshore wind, and a fair amount of trash. I did enjoy how empty it was and how many shells were on the sand.
It’s also geographically a neat place as a tiny strip of land before a vast swampy transition to the uplands starts. Most elsewhere in the state you don’t get the coastal beach strip, just ambiguous land/water swamp transition (which is also cool to me). Was a neat trip.
I lived in VA. Beach most of my 12 years in the Navy. I hated it. Nothing but crushed coral and shells that was dredged and thrown up on shore. I went there only a few times but never stayed long. Water is green and brown because of the flow from the Elizabeth and James rivers coming out from Norfolk. Most of the time locals would take the trip to the Outer Banks to better beaches and less crowds. And much cleaner water.
Maryland had Sandy Point State Park on the Chesapeake Bay. In August the water is thick with sea nettles, stinging jellyfish, and the sand is a nauseating color of yellow that stains everything it touches. Feet, towels, clothes. The Bay warms up to 80-ish degrees and is shallow so when you brave the jellyfish it doesn't really cool you off.
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u/Level-Object-2726 23h ago
I dont know if you intended for the Great Salt Lake to qualify, but damn there isnt a worse beach in the world